Christian Presuppositions for the Encounter with Communism
158The amazing and alarming twentieth century in which we live may be described in many ways. We shall not be far amiss if we characterize it as the century of Communist power. In the Russian Revolution of 1917 Marxism, which for seven decades had been only a provocative revolutionary philosophy, seized the reins of government and began to press its challenges and demands upon the whole world. Today nearly a billion people are under Communist rule, and another billion find themselves deeply stirred by Communist promises, pressures, appeals, or threats. The polarization of this global struggle and the resulting cold war between the United States and Soviet Russia affect every nation, large and small. As a dynamic force flowing from the brain and personality of Karl Marx, as a radical and compelling body of ideas, as an organized political system, and as a new kind of universal faith, Communism claims the attention, and it would like to claim the allegiance, of all mankind. To this end it employs every possible instrument and ally—modern science and technology, foreign trade and technical aid, anticolonial sentiment, national spirit, racial pride, the urge of undeveloped areas toward rapid industrialization and higher living standards, infiltration and astute propaganda, an aggressive expansion policy, and of course impressive military might.
In the nineteenth century the great ethnic religions seemed to be 159the chief barriers to the spread of Christianity. Today these religions, many of them undergoing revival, intertwined with national heritage and culture, and inspired by patriotic fervor, are still resistant to the Christian Gospel, although they welcome better understanding and more sympathetic approaches. Christianity now finds its most militant Opposition, its most severe test, not from other ancient faiths, but rather in its encounter with contemporary Communism. Ail the living religions of the world, we may add, are being challenged by Communist power.
What presuppositions does the Christian disciple or the Christian Church hold in this momentous encounter? With what convictions and in what mood and spirit shall we enter upon the critical meeting? It must be said that the circumstances under which Christians and Marxists come together today are not the same in all places. The daily contact of a Chinese Christian with his Communist regime and environment is quite different from the casual encounter of a Western Christian with a Communist visitor from the Soviet Union, or from the meetings of Christians and Communists in countries wooed but not yet dominated by Marxian ideas. The encounter takes on a different character in a democracy where free speech and worship are permitted, from what it does in a totalitarian state where the Christian citizen is suspected of being reactionary or disloyal. We need to keep in mind the varying dimensions of Communist—Christian dialogues and meetings, and at the same time look for some basic principles upon which Christians everywhere may unite, even when their governments face each other in unfriendliness or hostility.
The points which I now suggest come from personal thinking and study and also out of the experiences of Christians in many lands. They arise from our common search for Biblical and theological light upon the perplexing way before us.
1. As Christians we start from our faith, our faith in God, Creator, Judge, and Redeemer. In the divine~human relationship God takes the initiative; He made us for a purpose; He seeks us when we go astray; He yearns to save us. He has come into our time and space, into the history of mankind, through Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word or Truth expressed in human form. The cross reveals His infinite love, far beyond any imaginable love or sacrifice of man. The only worthy response that we can make is obedience.
All our horizontal social relationships are determined by the 160primary vertical relationship, between God and ourselves. Therefore, we need something more than a social philosophy, a revolutionary cause, a political ideal, or a crusade for a better world. We are commanded to seek above all the rule of God. Man—including Communist man—is made by God, is responsible to God, is in need of God.
When the Communist devotee calls our faith unscientific, superstitious, and antisocial, we do not answer him with a denunciation of his atheism. There is too much practical atheism outside of the Communist camp. Rather, we endeavor to make real to the Communist our faith that gives true meaning and value to life, a faith that is not measured by mortal minds alone, but dares to trust in the holy mysteries of infinity and eternity, a faith that rescues man from proud, self-righteous deification of his own achievements. We do not point with scornful finger at the Communist; we ask the Communist, if he will, to fold his hands along with the Christian, in worship of God who is also his God (though unrecognized) as much as ours. Some day, we pray, his antireligious scorn may change to humble and devout reverence.
2. Christianity has taken form in human structures and organizations; it has been enmeshed in history and culture; it has related itself to many different political and economic systems. We do not agree with the Marxist that religion is simply the reflection of unjust economic orders before the advent of Communist society. Certainly the Christian Gospel in its historical manifestations has both given to and received from its environment. We admit the unfortunate associations of the Christian Church with imperialism and other political evils of the past. At the same time we know that the Church has grown and changed through self-criticism, repentance, and inner purification. Christianity cannot be torn from the loom of history or from its social milieu today. Yet we must continually strive to set the Christian faith free from those inequalities and injustices with which it has been involved or is involved at the present time, and to present it in its essential purity to a sinful and suffering humanity. When Christians admit before God their sins in relation to society and the family of nations they ask the Communists to place themselves under the same judgment. We oppose new slaveries as well as old slaveries, aggression in the future as well as aggression in the past. The Christian call for radical repentance sounds throughout the world, to every nation and every 161people. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God… Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”
3. As Christians we see God at work in history in many ways; He appears to the nations in many guises. He is Lord of history, of the history of Babylon and Egypt and Rome as well as of Judah and Israel. Assyria was the “rod of His anger, the staff of His fury.” Cyrus was “His anointed, whose right hand He grasped,” and “His shepherd” who would fulfill His purpose. He made the Caesars to serve the spread of the Gospel. He is in the turnings and overturnings of history; He rules over the rise and fall of empires. Communism is part of His domain. In God’s providence Communism may be a teacher, a strange, harsh and unwelcome teacher, but nevertheless needed; in the words of Isaiah, “Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed.” If God works through totalitarian Communism to bring about in some countries swift reconstruction, long-awaited social reforms, and the discipline of society, we must accept this as a judgment not only on these countries but also on us of the more privileged nations who have failed in our duty to the rest of humanity.
At the same time Christians should not shut their eyes ‘to > the cost of violent revolutions and the terrible physical and spiritual wounds that they inflict on the body politic. In long perspective these terrific upheavals may be necessary, even though the evil in them seems to outweigh the good. They, and all the social ferment of our time, show that God has placed tremendous creative powers in the hands of His creatures, to search out the secrets of nature, “to have dominion over the works of God’s hands,” and to influence the course of history, powers that may be used to construct or to destroy. This is the risk that God took when He gave freedom to man. The fallen angel may become a rebellious devil. Yet we are sure that God is the ultimate master and ruler of history, past, present, and future.
4. It is imperative for the Christian to try to understand Marxian Communism from within—its origins and development, its theories and structures, its religious features, its subtle appeals and dynamic force, as much as he tries to understand any religious or social movement of today. Ignorance is perilous. Understanding does not mean acceptance, but simply a wise discernment of the “signs of the times,” and a clear insight into the thinking and feeling of 162groups that are sharply different from us. We cannot be satisfied with a general condemnation of Communism. We must move beyond this to a deeper appreciation of those neglected truths and forgotten emphases of our Judeo-Christian heritage to which Communism is impelling us. “What do ye more than they?” would be Jesus’ question to us today. The Christian Church may be subject to a sterner judgment because of the high faith that we profess and yet often fail to practice. And our understanding must extend farther than ideas and systems to the persons involved in Communism—those who have committed themselves to the Marxist cause, and the much larger number who, without fully supporting Communism or fully rejecting it, have to live and work daily under its control. Finally, if understanding is to be more than sentiment or knowledge it should lead us on to positive Christlike love, even for those whose philosophy and behavior may be repugnant to us.
5. Communist governments meet other governments on the political, cultural, economic, and military level, and out of these meetings come agreements, conflicts, or uneasy truce. Christians in both Communist and non-Communist lands have to judge the policies of their governments and take some stand with regard to these policies. Naturally, the Christian in the Soviet Union or the Chinese People’s Republic looks at certain questions quite differently from his fellow Christian in the Western world or in neutral countries of Africa and Asia. The armament race and the “balance of terror” as both sides increase their stock piles of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, affect Christians everywhere, but we should not let the meeting of Christian minds and hearts be limited to political and economic channels. Christians in the West look on national defense and collective security as a rampart behind which certain freedoms may be protected and certain ideals be achieved; no doubt many Christians in the Communist empire look at us from behind ramparts which appear necessary to the protection of their liberties and aspirations. The important thing to remember is that fruitful meetings of Christianity and Communism, or of Christians in the two worlds, cannot take place on the level of government relations, economic competition, or military struggle; they must be on the ground of a common humanity and a common concern for all individuals and groups in society, linked on our part with steady faith in God’s loving purpose for all His children. We must free ourselves from the hard stance of our governments, who bear the 163responsibility of defending us, and work for spiritual encounters with Communists everywhere and with Christians in Communist nations.
6. The Christian finds his ethical presuppositions challenged again and again by the Communists, in the first place because contradictory interpretations are given to many old and familiar moral concepts. It is easy to repudiate the questionable means that Communists employ and justify because they serve the ends of revolution and a classless society. We do not as quickly admit that Communist regimes have effected some significant moral reforms: in China, for example, they have eliminated commercial prostitution and the gambling evil, and have elevated the status of women. We come to the encounter with firm belief in an “open society” which the Marxist, intent upon forcing his doctrinaire views and new system, does not share, and with a respect for the dignity and value of individuals which has deep roots in the Hebrew—Christian philosophy of man. Because we find a kind of stern Puritanism and group discipline among the Communists some may think it possible to harmonize our ethical principles with theirs. But we shall be doomed to disappointment. It will be necessary to hold firmly to essential Christian principles of right and wrong and to apply them the best we can in new and strange situations, resisting all temptations to moral compromise.
My own experience in Communist China revealed what seemed to me four serious moral weaknesses in the Communist system: deceitful propaganda and false accusations; hatred and an almost demonic brutality toward those who are considered “enemies of socialism”; tyranny over the mind and spirit of men; and idolatry—not so much the official atheism as the worship of false, man-made gods and the absolutizing of human power. We must avoid identification of Christian morals with the standards of our Western middle-class society, without accepting at face value the distorted Communist picture of evil in the non-Communist world. Not merely in conversations but even more through demonstrations we need to make clear the truth and the power of the whole Christian ethic, for the individual and for society, recognizing that in God’s mysterious purpose the Communist represents, as Emil Brunner says, “a great ethical urge, a powerful idea, a new way of thinking and willing,” which we can only match with something higher and better.
1647. The relation of religion—and in this discussion we mean the relation of Christianity—to the state is a crucial issue brought into sharp focus by a recent book, How to Serve God in a Marxist Land. Does Jesus’ teaching about God and Caesar mean that the Christian in Russia or Communist China must serve two masters? Does the Pauline injunction about being subject to the governing authorities instituted by God apply under a Communist dictatorship? Is Communist government an order founded by God to which the Christian citizen owes allegiance? These are questions that mean different things to different people, and are answered in divergent ways, in Eastern and Western Europe, in India and China, in North America and in Africa. A neutral attitude does not appear possible in a Communist-dominated country, where certain accommodations must be made. In countries influenced by Communism, neutralism may result in the surrender of vital freedoms. Yet to some people freedom from hunger is more important than freedom from political autocracy.
The Bible was written on the background of Hebrew theocracy and ancient empires. It teaches no one pattern of government or economy, although we find in the last book of the New Testament an intense opposition to the despotism and injustices of the later Roman Empire. The prophetic message of the Scriptures seems to be fulfilled, as far as human civilization is concerned, in democratic rather than dictatorial rule. But the whole question of religious liberty is exceedingly difficult and complex. Christians need to approach it thoughtfully, earnestly, and with sensitive consciences, prepared to struggle and to sacrifice for basic human, God-given rights which people everywhere should enjoy. At the same time the Christian, when pressures are imposed or crucial tests come, must witness boldly to his supreme loyalty, and be ready always to say, “We must obey God rather than man,” or the government of man.
8. Christianity and Communism meet also as organized communities of faith. The Christian Church, with nearly two millenniums of history, encounters a party, an army, a system, a world-wide organization, that is less than a hundred years old, yet overwhelmingly strong and fierce. Roman Catholicism is more simiJar to Communism in its centralized controls and totalitarian pattern than is Protestantism, but the Reformed churches, while freer from ecclesiastical rigidity and the shackles of tradition, are woefully disunited in the face of Communist power.
165Christianity cannot hope to engage in effective dialogue with Communism or to influence, and evangelize, Communist followers and societies, unless its own organic life is healthy and vigorous, with all the characteristics of a true Church, a part of the “body of Christ.” Its faith in the Triune God must be firm and sure. Corporate worship and personal devotions must be maintained (as is being done in Eastern Europe and on the Chinese mainland). The sacraments must be observed, and the Church must find ways of witnessing, at all costs, to the people around it, and ways of serving and suffering for society with the love of Christ.
In the crisis of our time the Church is called upon to recover its unique, God-given unity and mission, as a testimony to all nations and peoples. Every member must be an evangelist, from his own home to the ends of the earth. The Communists believe intensely in their cause; their faith will continue to march onward unless Christians believe yet more intensely in their cause and in their Lord, and form a community of faith, hope, and love that will inspire both the fanatical Communists and the doubtful and fearful world which wonders where to turn.
Christian coexistence with Communism on this planet is an undeniable fact today, hardly a subject for argumént. Unless we can continue to live together we will perish together. If we can avoid a catastrophic war there may be increasing opportunities for us to meet, to talk, to work together instead of against each other, for a better world, and to bring about conditions for peace with a measure of justice. Let us be patient. A change may come in the next generation of Communists. Perhaps in a few decades, or centuries, Christianity and Communism will face one another as the Christian Church and Islam do today, different faiths and yet not intent each upon the destruction of the other. Meanwhile the Church of Jesus Christ must learn to live under all forms of political power, even as she has done in the past, and to testify to her divine, crucified, and risen Lord under the most favorable and also the most unfavorable circumstances. -
The Communists’ incessant and seemingly hypocritical talk about peace and brotherhood should not discourage the Christian Church from working in Christian ways for peace and brotherhood. Unless the Church can set the world a shining example of racial of truth in political and social spheres, of wholesome family and community life, of sacrificial ministry by the stronger to the weaker; 166unless she can maintain her fellowship across all the boundaries and barriers of our age; unless she can work with all good movements for freedom from hunger and want, unless she can help to redeem and transform our culture; she will seem to multitudes an irrelevant and expendable force. On the other hand, a new vision, a new dedication, a new united power in the world-wide Church of Christ, would give humanity new hope and courage.
9. We have said that twentieth-century Christianity is becoming more concerned about Communist power than about the major non-Christian religions. This does not mean a neglect of the other religions but rather a new phase in our relation to them. We see that Communist ideology and action challenge all religious faiths. To the orthodox Marxist every form of religion is an opiate and will ultimately disappear in the Communist society where the dialectic of history is resolved. Therefore, we find ourselves standing alongside Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and other living religions in opposition to the self-sufficient secularism and atheistic creed of the Communist movement. Again, our study both of other religions and of the world-wide ideological struggle strengthens our conviction that Christianity has something unique to offer, as the way of salvation that mankind most needs, and as the highest ideal of personal and social living. Through a purified Christian Church, perhaps even a severely persecuted Church, God can work His will in our age. Communism will help to sweep away many superstitions and low forms of religion. It will destroy the wood, hay, and stubble, but the true gold will remain. And even if civilization comes crashing down around us, Christians can be the beginning of the new order that arises. Christianity should lead the believing world in its meek yet mighty encounter with Communist power, confident that we shall see new miracles in the spiritual as well as the scientific realm.
10. The Communist faith is eschatological. But its utopia lacks height and depth. It has been called a secularized form of the Christian apocalyptic. This is an oversimplification, but it is certainly able to fire the imagination and kindle the enthusiasm of mul- ‘titudes. Even those who once were inspired and have been disillusioned admit its hypnotic power. But what does it promise us beyond this brief and earth-bound life? What hope do we have beyond human history with its darkness and tragedy along with its light and joy? The Communist government in China has forbidden 167certain millennial sects from preaching crass interpretations of the imminent end of the world and final judgment. Yet, both under Communist power and regimentation and where there is greater freedom of worship and witness, we need to proclaim the Christian hope, as taught in the Scriptures, “till he come.”
The Christian believes in personal immortality and not simply immortality of the human race or of the working class, as Marxism promises. He believes also in a social message and a social hope for the hungry, the sick, the illiterate, the oppressed, and the despairing; otherwise, Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth has no relevance for us today. Christianity cannot afford to leave all further revolution and reform to nonreligious or antireligious movements. “The Christian Church,” said Samuel Taylor Coleridge over a hundred years ago, “is the sustaining, correcting, befriending opposite of the world.” While it is in the world, and while the world lasts, the Church must not for a moment cease its effort, by work and sacrifice and prayer, to bring society as well as individuals nearer to God and His purpose for mankind. Christianity is supported by its majestic hope, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” What we earnestly strive for here, by God’s grace, is a foretaste of the wonders that God has prepared for us in the life beyond, and for all His obedient children in the ages to come. Greater than any terrifying but transient Communist power is that which we invoke when we pray, “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.”
Tip: use the ← and → keys to move between chapters; press Ctrl K to search. Share any printed page with index.html?p=<page>.